


the law of falling bodies

by flyingblackhawk



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Teachers AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24716011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingblackhawk/pseuds/flyingblackhawk
Summary: As he picks up the pieces of his life, Clint Barton rents a room to the intriguing new teacher at school.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 9
Kudos: 62





	1. stepping on cracks

Clint grips the cool metal and checks his positioning again. He shifts his fingers slightly, and then pulls the trigger. The staple gun clicks once. He shifts it. Twice. Three, four times. He pulls back to look at his handiwork. _Large room with ensuite. Cohabit with homeowner and dog. Contact Clint._

“How’s that?” he asks. 

“Looks great.” Phil’s thinking about something else. Clint tries not to notice that. 

“Because I wasn’t sure about _cohabit,_ ” he says. Phil opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. Clint knows what he’s wrestling with.

“If you’re not sure-”

“I’ve got a mortgage to pay, Phil.” 

His friend sighs. “Alright.” 

Clint puts the staple gun back on the table, and retrieves his coffee. 

“There’s a new teacher who was talking about needing accommodation,” says Phil. “Russian, I think.” 

“We teach Russian here?” Clint asks. Phil laughs. 

“She _is_ Russian. She teaches Spanish and French. I think I saw on her CV that she also speaks Mandarin.” 

“Sounds worldly,” Clint sighs. “I’ll get her email.”

He goes to leave, but Phil is hovering awkwardly between him and the door of the staffroom. 

“Phil,” he protests. “Come on, I’m fine.” 

“Just let me know if you need anything,” says Phil, as if he doesn’t have seven hundred things to be doing right now that are more important than looking after a mopey friend. 

“I will,” Clint lies. Phil skewers him with an accusing gaze that says everything the man is too polite to say, and Clint does his best not to flip him off as he turns and walks away. Phil is too clever by half. If he wasn’t one of Clint’s closest friends, he’d hate the guy. 

At the door to the admin office, Clint steels himself. It’ll either be Sandra or Duncan. He grits his teeth, and pushes open the door. 

“Oh hi, Clint!” It’s Sandra. Fuck. 

“Hey, Sandra,” he says. Before he can ask for anything, Sandra is up and bustling around her counter so she can give him a hug. He knows she’s a hugger, so he tries his best to forgive her almost wilful oversight of how uncomfortable hugs make him right now. He pats her back awkwardly. 

“I need to get someone’s email,” he attempts. 

“We’ve all been thinking of you,” Sandra simpers into his shoulder. “It’s so dreadful.” 

“I’m fine.” He tries not to sound mad about it. He pats her again, and she finally lets him go, only to grab his cheeks like he’s two. 

“Oh but you must be so _sad,_ ” Sandra steamrolls. “It’s terrible, this whole business-” 

“It’s all very sad,” he agrees, and extricates himself from her grip. “If I could just get the contact for-”

“Have you heard from her?” 

“Bobbi? No.” He clenches his teeth, and she finally twigs that he’s not going to fall sobbing onto the carpet of her office, and damn, if she doesn’t look a tiny bit disappointed. She rubs his back comfortingly. He tries his absolute best not to hate her. 

“Could you get me the email of the new Spanish teacher?” he asks. “Phil said she was looking for somewhere to live.”

“Of course,” says Sandra, her tone still dripping with sympathy. “God, having to get a tenant, you poor thing-”

“Should be on the staff list,” Clint cuts in. Sandra types for a moment and then grabs a piece of paper to scribble down the address. She hands it over, and Clint turns to go. 

“Look after yourself, honey,” she calls after him. 

“Thanks,” he calls back, already out the door. 

When his front door finally shuts behind him, he rests against it for a long moment. He walks down the hall to the lounge. His footsteps echo off the bare boards and bounce around empty walls. He needs to buy some fucking furniture, he thinks, as he opens the door to the yard. Lucky comes bounding out of nowhere and nearly bowls him over. 

“Hey, buddy,” Clint says, and despite the day he’s had, he grins as he ruffles Lucky’s fur. There’s leftover noodles in the fridge from yesterday, maybe the day before. They look fine, so he heats them up on the stove - he needs to buy a microwave, it keeps slipping his mind. He eats standing at the counter. He feeds Lucky. He lights the fire. Eventually he finds himself sitting on the one piece of furniture in the lounge (an old beanbag chair) with his laptop and a contented dog asleep on the rug beside him. He pulls the paper out of his pocket. Natasha Romanoff. Spanish and French teacher. 

_Ms. Romanoff,_ he taps out. 

_I hope you don’t mind me getting your contact details from the office. My name is Clint. I’m one of the social sciences teachers. Phil Coulson mentioned you were looking for a place to stay, and the first floor of my house is available. My place is about twenty minutes’ drive from the school, it’s not furnished but it has an ensuite and a little balcony. Let me know if you’d like to come and see it._

_Best,_

_Clint Barton._

He reads it over a couple of times, considers just selling the house to avoid having to do this, then hits send before he can talk himself out of it. He loves this house, and he loves his job. He’s not moving again. He answers a few other emails, and is partway through reading something from Maria about volcanoes when he falls asleep. 

He wakes when his screen lights up. There’s a ping from his inbox, and he looks around to find the dog still sleeping, the fire burned down to coals, and his back aching from lying in a beanbag chair. He looks at the clock on his screen. Nine. God, he feels old. 

Clint finally drags his attention to his inbox. There is a reply from Natasha. 

_Mr. Barton,_

_Thank you for your email. If it suits you, I would like to see the room. I will find you tomorrow and we can talk in person._

_Regards,_

_Natasha Romanoff._

It’s hardly impassioned, but it makes Clint feel a little less terrible knowing that someone might want to live here. He looks around at the empty room. He shoves down a nauseating wave of sadness and puts his laptop on to charge on the bench, then whistles for the dog. Lucky leads the way back down the hall to the bedroom Clint has commandeered. He can’t sleep up in the master bedroom. He hasn’t even been upstairs since he dragged the mattress down into the guest room by the front door. It’s childish, he knows, and this is his house, he should be able to do whatever he wants, but that doesn’t seem to be the way things are working out. Even on his own, he can’t do what he wants. The fact that he doesn’t know what he wants just makes everything more frustrating. 

Clint strips off his clothes and finds his sweats in the dark. He collapses onto the mattress, and Lucky settles down next to him. Clint falls asleep trying to ignore his own feelings. As with so many things recently, it doesn’t go so well.

In the morning, as he’s pouring coffee in the staffroom and wondering if everyone can tell he doesn’t own an iron, the door opens and a stranger walks in. Her hair catches his attention first. It’s a deep red, worn up in an elegant twist. He blinks, and returns his attention to his coffee. Then he realises who she is, and turns back to her. She’s already walked up to him, and he fights the sudden, confusing urge to run away. 

“Hi,” he says. “You must be Natasha.” 

“Nice to meet you,” she replies. “Clint, I presume?” 

He nods. Wait, didn’t Phil say she was Russian? She sounds like she’s lived in the States all her life. 

“Would you mind if I came and looked at the room tonight?” she asks. “I’m staying in a motel at the moment, and I’m looking forward to showering somewhere where I don’t have to wear shoes.” 

He chuckles at the unexpected humour. Okay. This is okay. He can do this. “Sure. If you like, I can drive you when I go home.” 

“That works,” she says. She’s friendly, but direct.

“Uh… I guess I’ll see you after homeroom then,” he says. “I take group seven in the East building.”

“See you then,” she smiles, and breezes away. Every move she makes is deliberate and elegant, and Clint has to force himself to look away. He fills the pit in his stomach with coffee, and heads to class. 

His students give him cause for suspicion throughout the day - they don’t give him nearly as much grief as they usually do. His ninth grade History kids follow his instructions to the letter, which is so weird that he asks them if they’re okay. Their shifting glances and whispers confirm his fears. 

“I swear,” he grumbles to Phil as they patrol the tennis courts at lunchtime. “Sandra could talk underwater with her mouth full of marbles.” 

“She means well.” Phil’s tone is mild, but it betrays the fact - to Clint, at least - that he doesn’t believe his own bullshit. Clint laughs, and they don’t talk about it for the rest of their duty, for which Clint is absurdly grateful. 

The final bell eventually rings, and his homeroom students rush to get bags from lockers and catch their friends on their way out. Clint weaves his way between them, saying goodbye here and there as he scans the crowd. Natasha waves to him from across the walkway, and he waves awkwardly back. 

He gestures with his satchel. “This way.” 

They walk together towards the staff carpark, neither of them saying anything as students stream around them. 

“Who’s the lady in the window?” Natasha asks, as he unlocks the car. Clint’s head snaps up, and he sees a face glued to the window, beaming. 

“Oh for _fuck’s_ sake,” he groans. “That’s Sandra. We’d better go.” 

Natasha raises an eyebrow, but gets into the passenger side of his car. Clint’s already dreading what Sandra will say to anyone and everyone about Clint taking home the new teacher. Fucking Sandra. 

“She’s a lot, huh?” Natasha murmurs, and her tone reminds him of Phil’s. Diplomatic, with just a hint of a smile.

“She means well,” he says, echoing his friend’s empty platitude. It sounds just as ridiculous as it sounded coming out of Phil’s mouth. He catches Natasha’s smile out of the corner of his eye, and it relaxes him a little. That relaxation shrinks, though, the closer they get to his house. He suddenly finds himself wishing he’d gone and bought some furniture, or at least a few chairs or something. 

“Here we are,” he announces, as he pulls into the driveway. At least the outside of the house is a nice sight. It’s barely been six months since it was on the market, and he’s done his best to keep the garden neat. 

He leads the way inside. He can do this. This is fine. He almost offers her some tea, but he remembers he doesn’t have a kettle. Fuck. He really needs to get to a… whatever shop sells kettles, and chairs, and everything else he doesn’t have, which is pretty much everything. 

“The garden’s lovely,” says Natasha, peering through the sliding door. Lucky bounds up to the door, wagging his tail madly. 

“You can let him in, if you don’t mind him begging for pats the whole time you’re here.”

Natasha smiles that same reserved smile. She opens the door, and Lucky whines excitedly, practically curling himself around her legs as she pets him. 

“What’s his name?” Natasha asks. 

“Lucky,” Clint replies. It’s ironic, he supposes. He wishes he at least had beer to offer. 

“So the bedroom’s upstairs?” she prompts. Clint realises he’s been hovering in the kitchen, reluctant to go anywhere. He nods, and forces a friendly smile. She follows him up the stairs, and he opens the door for her, gesturing for her to enter. He stops on the threshold. The afternoon light is hitting the carpet in the familiar silhouette of the panes of the sliding door, and even that is enough to make his chest ache. The carpet is clean, as are the walls. The curtains are gone, along with the bed frame. The room gapes, empty. There’s so much more than just furniture missing. 

“Are you okay?” She’s looking at him, and he realises how long he’s been standing on the spot.

Clint swallows. “Sorry. Yeah. So, the bathroom’s through there, and the balcony’s here.” He steps into the room, keeping to the edges as much as he can, a child trying not to step on the cracks in the pavement for fear of terrible things. The fresh air on the balcony is a relief. Natasha comes out to have a look. 

“This is great,” she says. Clint gives a thin smile as she admires the view of the garden below. They walk back through the room, and Clint waits on the landing while she looks at the bathroom. It’s nice, he knows that. It was a big selling point for him. 

“Have you just moved in?” she asks, startling him back into the real world. 

“About six months ago.”

She waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t, and they walk down the stairs. He gets the feeling she already knows - or at least suspects - what happened. 

“Well, I was planning on buying furniture anyway,” she says, smoothly.

“I can take you,” he offers. She smiles. 

“What do you need in the way of checks?” she asks. “Do you want a credit score, do you need me to sign something?” 

He blinks. “So… you want to move in?” 

“On Saturday, if you don’t mind.” 

“Sure,” he replies. He’s a bit stunned by the swiftness of it all, and he reminds himself that this is a good thing. “Um… yeah, I guess… you can give me any checks you have, but you work at the school so… um…”

“I’ll drop them in your office,” she prompts. Clint nods, and she leads the way to the front door. As he opens it, he sees a cab waiting outside. She must have called one. He walks her down the path to the curb, and opens the door for her.

“Oh, by the way,” she says, holding the door open, “does Lucky get along with cats?” 

“I’m not sure.” 

She smiles. “I guess we’ll find out.” 

The door closes, and the cab rolls away. Clint watches it until it turns a corner and is out of sight, then he slowly makes his way back inside. 


	2. IKEA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha furnish the house, and learn a little more about one another.

On Saturday morning, Natasha arrives in a cab with two boxes, a suitcase and a small black cat in a carrier. Clint, who has been keeping an eye out for a moving truck, doesn’t realise it’s her until she’s halfway through the gate. He waves, and jogs over to pick up one of the boxes. It’s not heavy, but it’s taped securely shut.

“You travel pretty light,” he says, as he kicks the door open to let her through. He gets the sense she doesn’t feel like talking about it, so he makes himself useful by carrying the box to the upstairs landing. He escapes downstairs quickly. He can’t even be at the top of the staircase in his own house. Ridiculous. He busies himself tidying the already tidy kitchen - not much to do when there’s next to nothing in the cupboards. Natasha reappears as he is boiling water in a saucepan, and she watches in what might be either amusement or bewilderment as he pours it into two mugs over instant coffee. God, he needs a coffee maker.

“I thought we could head down towards Columbus,” he says. “About forty minutes south of here there’s a mall with an IKEA.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asks.

Clint gestures around the empty room with his coffee mug. “I need to kit this place out, and I’m on a high school teacher’s salary. It’ll be a while before I’m too fancy for IKEA.”

She smiles, amused. Clint leans against the kitchen counter, and tries to imagine what the house will look like when they’re done. He can’t. The image of the old blue sofa appears like a mirage in the corner where it used to be, next to the bookshelf he sanded down and repainted for Bobbi just four or five months ago. He sees her curled up on that sofa in the sun, reading. He blinks, and the living room is empty again.

“Clint?”

She’s asked him something, he realises. “Hmm?”

“When do you want to leave?”

“Right after you finish that coffee,” he answers, with as convincing a smile as he can muster.

IKEA is an overwhelming mess of noise, light and products. Clint and Natasha both grab large carts. Natasha consults a map on the wall. Clint is starting to think he probably should have written a shopping list when she comes back to the carts.

“I mostly need furniture,” she says, “so I’m going to cut through to the lounge and bedroom areas. Catch up at the food court in an hour?”

He shoots her a thumbs up, which he immediately regrets, and she gives him an awkward wave in return. Clint swallows his embarrassment and starts off for Kitchenware.

He quickly realises that there is a lot more missing from his house than he thought. In goes a spatula, dish cloths, a colander- did Bobbi take the whole damn kitchen with her? He forces himself through to Appliances (a microwave, kitchen scales, a blender), then Lighting (lamps, light globes, does he need lights for the patio?), in Tables he notes down a few things to fetch from the warehouse section (dining table, coffee table, bedside table, shit, he needs a bedframe, fuck-), then Beds, then Rugs, then Sofas. Soon his cart is full, and he can’t think of anything else he needs aside from the large furniture, so he escapes the warren at the food court, parking his cart in the designated area. He sees Natasha, who waves to him from a table.

“How’s it going?” he asks, once they’re both sat down with plates of what looks like bolognese.

“I think I’ve found most of what I need,” she says. “You?”

He shrugs, and slides her the little notepad he’s been scribbling on with the standard IKEA tiny pencil.

“Dining table,” she reads, “sofa, entertainment unit, bookshelf.” She looks across the table at him, and he’s not sure what she’s thinking. He doesn’t like the feeling, so he pretends to be interested in the shape of his pasta.

“So,” he says. “Uh… Phil said you’re teaching French and Spanish?”

She nods. “I’m a substitute for the others as well.”

Clint frowns, confused. “The others? As in… the other French and Spanish teachers?”

“The other languages.”

Clint blinks. “Wait, you speak German as well?”

“And Italian.”

“I didn’t even know we taught Italian.”

She laughs. Clint is reeling, and she seems to be enjoying his amazement.

“Okay,” he manages. “So… how many languages do you speak?”

“Fluently? English, of course, Russian, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Vietnamese, German and Italian.”

Clint whistles. “So why are you teaching? Sounds like you’d be better suited to diplomacy.”

“I don’t know that I would be,” she says. She smiles, but there’s a hint of something else in her eyes. He pushes past that, because the last time he asked a woman what she wasn’t saying, it ended with him alone in an empty house.

“Phil said you moved from Russia,” he says, wondering how to phrase his next question, and whether it will make him sound like an asshole.

“I learned English as a kid,” she says. He doesn’t love that she can read his mind, but he chalks it up to his expressive face and the fact that she’s clearly a genius.

“At school?”

“School,” she repeats, like she’s thinking about it. “Yes.” She is silent for a beat, then takes a sip of water. “Do you speak any languages?”

“A bit of Italian,” he says. “Oh. And ASL.”

“Sign?” she asks. He gestures to his ears. The hearing aids are fairly inconspicuous, so he’s surprised she hasn’t noticed them.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I can hear pretty well with these bad boys in.”

“You’ll have to teach me some,” she says. “I never learned any sign. Always wanted to.”

“I can probably swing that,” he smiles. “I’m better at teaching geography, though.”

Natasha starts to eat, and Clint takes it as a signal to do the same. When they’re finished, they get back to it, and soon Natasha is helping him find and retrieve all ten pieces of the sofa he’s chosen. He holds one of the boxes in hand, squinting at the label, trying to read the name of it.

“Va- Vas…”

“Västerås,” she supplies.

“Swedish too?” he muses. She smiles, and sets the last box on the cart.

At the checkout, the middle-aged cashier makes smiley, bland conversation. Clint is about ready to take a nap, and misses all but every fifth word or so. She reminds him of Sandra.

“So you two,” she chirps, as she scans his spatulas, “what’s your house like?”

“Hm?” Clint mumbles. “Oh. Nice. Fine.”

“Did you buy it after you got married?”

“Yep.”

“That’s great. You two make such a lovely couple.”

Clint blinks. “What?”

The cashier points her scanner at Natasha, who is looking at brightly coloured fly swatters a few metres away. Clint looks from the cashier to Natasha and back again.

“She’s not my wife,” he blurts. The cashier’s smile falters slightly. Clint glances back at Natasha, who, mercifully, seems not to have heard him.

“She’s not my wife,” he repeats. The words sound bruised.

“I didn’t mean to presume-”

“It’s fine.” He waves her off. “Don’t worry about it, I… I was confused. Sorry.”

The cashier rings up the rest of his items, and after he pays the eye-watering final amount, she helps him wheel his carts over to the delivery area. Soon Natasha follows, and they hand over all but one cart’s worth of items to the home delivery team. Clint pays another exorbitant amount for the truck to come the extra distance to his place, and then finally they make their way to the car. He opens the trunk and puts the back seats down, and they manoeuvre everything into place as best they can.

The trip home is as pleasantly quiet as the trip out, and Clint spends the drive lost in thoughts of furniture and the what-ifs of the past. When they get home, he and Natasha methodically empty the car. He retrieves his toolbox from the little shed in the garden, and gets to work assembling piece after piece of flat-pack furniture.

Natasha has music on upstairs, he realises after half an hour or so. He can hear her moving about as he makes endless rotations with a small allen key.

She comes down after a while to tell him she’s going to the grocery store. He throws her his keys and doesn’t think to ask her if she has a driver’s license until she’s already gone. He keeps on churning out bits and pieces - the sofa is assembled, the unit for the TV he doesn’t have is looking good, and the dining table is complete except for its legs. The truck arrives while Natasha is gone, and Clint helps the men unload everything. All the boxes get dropped in the living room. Cardboard and packing materials obscure every inch of the floor. Clint moves everything destined for his bedroom down into the hallway, and keeps going.

Natasha gets back to find him sitting on the sofa and fiddling with a lamp.

“Looking good,” she says. Clint looks around. Aside from the mountains of packaging he’s shoved up against one wall, the living room actually looks like a living room again. It’s nice, especially in the evening light.

“I got us some pizza,” she says. “And beer.”

Clint gives an appreciative groan. He helps her bring in the groceries, and as they dodge one another in the kitchen to put everything away, Clint feels a shade better about the world in general. He’s not replacing what he’s missing, but it’s a kind of different that doesn’t hurt. That’s good, he decides, and he is surprised to find himself smiling as Natasha hands him a beer. They sit at the new dining table and eat their pizza, and Clint is struck by the impression that he’s fallen into a parallel universe. Same house. Different furniture. Different pizza from a different pizza place. Different girl.

Later, when he’s lying in bed (a real bed now, not just a mattress), he takes out his sadness and looks at it, imagining he can hold it in his hands, see it. He imagines it hurts to touch - it hurts to feel it. But it’s slightly smoother than it was yesterday, and it feels like maybe his body can contain it a little easier. He’s finally had a day where not every second of it was spent wondering what he could have done differently to change things. Tonight, for some reason, he’s thinking ahead, thinking about how he might set up the living room a little differently, or what he could do to the garden next weekend. It’s about time to plant tomatoes. He’s delighted at the thought. Even the perpetual ache in his chest at the thought of Bobbi doesn’t drag him down into a pit of depression like it usually does, and for once he’s asleep before midnight.

“Coffee,” Natasha announces, when he makes it to the kitchen on Sunday morning in search of toast. He takes it, and goes over to have a look at the espresso machine.

“I’ve never had one of these before,” he yawns.

“Give it a month, and you’ll never want to live without it,” she tells him. She has her hair up in a messy ponytail, and she seems at ease in the house, like she’s unfurling and settling softly onto every surface. Clint sips his coffee. Divine. It’s strange for a morning to feel soft and pleasant.

“I thought we could introduce Lucky to Liho,” she says. It takes Clint a moment to realise she’s talking about her cat.

“Sure,” he says. “He’s never really met a cat properly before.”

“I can keep her upstairs if they don’t get along,” Natasha says. She’s thought further ahead than Clint, who’s now wondering if one of those baby gates would work for his dog.

Natasha goes upstairs and returns with Liho in her arms. Clint reaches out to pet her, but she flattens her ears and bats his hand away. Clint retreats, grimacing apologetically at Natasha.

“What do you need me to do?” he asks.

“Bring Lucky in and hold him by his collar,” she says. “I’ll let Liho down and we’ll see what they do.”

Clint goes to the kitchen door. He can see Lucky through the windows, wagging his tail madly. He breathes in, and briefly hopes that his dog isn’t about to ruin this whole arrangement. Then he opens the door, grabs Lucky’s collar, and leads him into the living room.

Natasha lets Liho down, and the cat stretches, observes Lucky for a long moment, then paces over to examine him. She moves in closer, and Clint holds Lucky’s collar in case he needs to pull him back, but the caution is unnecessary. Liho bumps her cheek against Lucky’s chin, and Lucky licks her face. Natasha chuckles, and Clint releases his grip on Lucky’s collar.

“There you go,” Clint says. “Best friends already.”

Natasha smiles at him. Clint is about to ask her if she wants another coffee when her phone rings. She pulls it out of her pocket, looks at it, and sighs.

“Work?” Clint asks. She doesn’t answer him, just takes her phone and slips out the kitchen door into the back garden. Liho trots over and mewls at the closed door.

“Give her a minute,” he tells the cat, bending down to pet her. She runs through his legs and escapes into the living room. Clint shakes his head and turns his attention to the espresso machine. In theory, he knows how these work. He gets as far as detaching a handle-like piece he’s pretty sure the coffee goes in when Natasha re-enters the kitchen.

“Help,” he pleads.

“Here,” she laughs. “Move, I’ll do it.”

Clint watches the procedure as she makes a coffee for him and then one for herself.

“My hero,” he groans, as she passes him his cup.

The late afternoon finds the two of them sitting out on the patio chairs in the sun, empty coffee cups abandoned on the ground. Clint is pointing out all the things he’s been planning to do with the garden, but hasn’t gotten around to.

“And that bed there, that’s going to be tomatoes,” he tells her, waving lazily in the direction of an empty raised garden bed.

“You should plant some flowers,” Natasha says. “It’s the right season for it. That back fence would look nice with a bed of peonies, or irises.”

“It’s all yours,” Clint replies. “I usually get a lot more done by this time, but…”

He trails off, because he has been doing a good job of not thinking about him and Bobbi so far today, and he’s surprised at how quickly his good mood has evaporated. Natasha rescues him after a beat.

“How about more vegetables?” she asks.

“Broccoli,” he proposes. “Peas, maybe.” He can’t quite shake the fog that’s descended on him. He closes his eyes and leans back in his chair. Natasha is still making suggestions, and he lets her voice wash over him like the sunlight. She sounds happy to be here, and he wants to feel that way again.

“Clint?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, opening his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

He sighs. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head. Natasha gets up without a word and goes inside. Clint is about to follow her and apologise when she reappears on the patio, two beers in hand. She passes him a bottle, and he thanks her, but the words don’t quite convey the rush of gratitude he feels for her in that moment. She understands, he realises, what it’s like to be moving through something painful. Clint can only wonder what happened to her to grant her that understanding. Maybe they’re both damaged.

As the sun dips lower in the sky, Clint makes a promise to himself. He’s going to do his best to get better, and, if he can, he’s going to help Natasha too.


	3. a week of afternoons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha fall into a pleasant routine. Something strange catches Clint's attention.

Monday finds Clint standing at the edge of the football field, doing lunchtime duty with Phil.

“So how’s it going?” his friend asks.

A big question, Clint thinks. And yet, not hard to answer. The same question a month ago would have sent him headlong into a tailspin.

“It’s going well,” he tells Phil. It’s true, and it feels strange not to be putting a positive spin on his life to avoid his friend’s concerned looks. He’s become good at it over the last few months, but that particular skill isn’t needed today.

“Mark!” Phil shouts across the playground. “Put down the stick!”

The stick-wielding freshman sheepishly does as he’s told. Phil’s eyes are firmly on the kids, but Clint can tell that his friend’s attention is still very much with him, examining him for any sign that things aren’t actually okay and he needs to be rescued from a self-made disaster.

“It’s nice having someone in the house,” he assures Phil. “And it’s _really_ nice to have furniture again.”

“And it’s okay having her in your old bedroom?”

“Jesus, Phil. Yes. It’s fine.”

Phil waves off his indignation. “I’m just saying, if you were struggling with that, it wouldn’t be unusual. It hasn’t been that long.”

Clint spies an opening. “You should probably spend less time worrying about my sleeping arrangements and take a look at your own.”

“I don’t know what you’re insinuating,” Phil says, in a tone that says he absolutely does, and Clint should absolutely shut up. Clint absolutely does not.

“Yes you do,” he laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not exactly in a position to judge anyone else’s love life right now.”

“You seem happier,” Phil says, expertly twisting them back onto the topic at hand.

“I feel happier,” Clint says. “Or… less shitty. At least now I actually look forward to the afternoons.”

Monday afternoon comes just a few hours later, and after Clint drops Natasha at the house he heads to the garden supply store. He’s set on getting the tomato bed going, and while he’d usually raise his own seedlings, store bought is going to have to do. While he’s tossing up between two brands of fertiliser, he gets an idea. He gathers everything he needs, and piles it all into the car.

When he gets home, and is done hauling everything into the garden, he goes to find Natasha. She’s reading a book on the sofa.

“I got you something,” he says. “Come and see.”

She looks at him, bemused, and follows him out to the little greenhouse by the fence. It’s little more than a shadecloth tent, but it houses two benches, one of them now covered with seedling trays.

“I wasn’t sure what you wanted to grow,” he says, “so I bought a whole bunch. You can always go back and swap them if you want to.”

Natasha looks at the trays, and at the packets of flower seeds he’s holding out to her. She takes them, and he thinks for a moment that he’s made some massive faux pas, because she looks sort of upset. Then, finally, she smiles.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice soft. “This… this is so sweet. Thank you, Clint.”

He leaves her in the greenhouse and starts work on preparing the garden bed for the tomatoes. He digs fertiliser through the soil, and hammers the stakes for the trellis frame into the ground at both ends of the bed. He manages to finish the trellis by the time it gets dark, and when he can’t see well enough to keep working he goes inside to find that Natasha has made stir fry.

“You stink,” she complains, wrinkling her nose. Clint laughs, and they take their bowls of dinner outside.

On Tuesday afternoon they work on opposite sides of the garden, Clint planting out his tomato seedlings and Natasha pressing seeds into potting mix in the greenhouse. When it gets dark, they migrate inside to the kitchen counter. Clint gets them beers and they sit across from one another, dirty hands grasping cold bottles.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a garden,” she murmurs. He senses that she’s not inviting questions, so he doesn’t ask what kinds of things one might grow in Russia.

“The flowerbeds are all yours,” he says, instead. “Maybe even a vegetable bed, if you want.”

She smiles at him, and he finds himself smiling back without even meaning to.

Clint goes outside when she goes up to bed, and for a while he just sits on a patio chair with Lucky next to him, looking at the tomato plants. For the first time in ages, he feels like he’s created something good for himself. Eventually, he drags himself into a cathartic shower, and collapses into bed, still smiling.

On Wednesday, they get home late after a meeting, and end up ordering pizza. While they wait for it, they play cards and talk about their students.

“How about Ryan?” Natasha asks.

“Barclay? He’s a psychopath. Only responds to intimidation, which is why I can’t control him.”

She laughs at that. “Really? He’s a sweetheart with me. What about that tall girl, the one with the boyfriend in your class?”

“Amy Lu. Hot tip, if you tell her you’re proud of her, she’ll love you forever.”

She thinks for a moment. “How long has Coulson been sleeping with that scary woman from administration? Melissa?”

“Melinda,” Clint grins. “And I couldn’t possibly comment, Phil’s forbidden me on pain of death.”

“Come on. Spill.”

“How do you even know about that? Nobody else on staff has caught on. I only know because Phil told me himself.”

She smiles at him. “I have my ways. Okay, if we can’t talk about Phil… Who’s your favourite student?”

“I don’t have a favourite.”

“Okay, who’s your least favourite?”

He laughs. “Mike Tanner. By far. And no, I won’t tell you why. Kendra probably will though.”

He’s interrupted by the doorbell, and goes to fetch their pizza.

“What about the future?” she asks him once he's settled back down and grabbed a slice. He looks at her as he chews, not understanding what she’s asking.

“Do you see yourself here in… say, five years?”

That gives him pause. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“Really? Never?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “My long-term plans sort of… changed. A couple months back.”

“Oh,” she says, and Clint can tell she’s tactfully not voicing the questions she has. If she’s good enough to figure out Phil and Melinda, she’s definitely good enough to figure out what happened between him and his ex-wife. Or Kendra’s already told her everything. Fucking Kendra.

“I guess I used to see myself here for the long haul,” he tells her, after a momentary pause. “Before, I mean. When we bought this place and moved in, I thought this was it, you know? The place I’d be for the rest of my life. I was so happy. Bobbi… not so much, I guess.” He can feel his stomach knotting up, his chest twisting to avoid the sudden rush of grief and anger.

“You’re still here,” says Natasha. It’s not unkind, but there’s a slight tinge of confusion, as if she doesn’t understand why he didn’t skip town the moment his marriage fell apart. If he’s honest, Clint’s not entirely sure either. It was a difficult temptation to resist.

“I love my job,” he says. “I thought about selling this place, thought about it really seriously, especially when I started having to make the mortgage payments on my own. I don’t know, I guess I felt like selling the house would be giving up, and if I did that then I might as well have just headed back to Iowa and embrace my farming roots.”

She smiles. “Is that why you’re so good in the garden?”

“You just wait until you see what I can do with corn.”

That makes her laugh, and he feels the awful twisting sensation in his chest melt away. Natasha takes the lead, steering the conversation back to the garden and the types of flowers she’s raising in the seedling trays, and Clint just listens, grateful.

On Thursday afternoon, as he’s changing the bulb in the porch light, Clint notices a nice car parked across the street from the house. He thinks he maybe recognises it - wasn’t it parked in the same spot when they left for work this morning? It’s an Audi, sleek and black, and there’s a man sitting in the driver’s seat. It’s hard to see through the slightly tinted windows but it looks like he’s on his phone. As Clint is watching him, the man looks up, sees Clint, and abruptly starts the car and drives off. Clint blinks, and tries to rationalise it. The guy was probably just lost, and looking up directions. It’s a coincidence, or two similar-looking cars. He goes back to the task at hand, but he can’t shake the slight unease he suddenly feels.

He’s still thinking about it later, as he eats dinner across the table from Natasha.

“Everything alright?” she asks. He nods absently, then shakes himself back into the present.

“It’s probably nothing,” he says. “I saw a car this morning, sitting over the road. I could have sworn the same car was there just before when I was on the porch. Same guy in the front seat and everything. It was weird.”

Natasha’s lips tighten just a fraction, and just for a moment, but it’s long enough for Clint to notice it.

“Sounds like a coincidence,” she says, shaking her head.

She doesn’t look bothered, so Clint brushes it off until a while later, when he is washing the dishes. As he puts away a mug, he hears Natasha’s voice, quiet but sharp in the room above him. He tries not to listen, but when he passes through the hallway to get to the bathroom he realises she’s on the phone, speaking to someone in Russian. She sounds angry, angrier than Clint has ever heard her. He pauses for a moment, listening to her side of the conversation. Then, seized with sudden guilt, he hurries into the bathroom and leaves her to her call. It’s probably nothing, he tells himself. Yeah. Nothing.

By Friday afternoon, he’s almost forgotten the incident. He takes Lucky for a walk to the nearby park, and just as they’re walking back towards his front gate, he sees the car pull up outside his house. Before he even realises he’s doing it, Clint is striding up to the car and rapping his knuckles on the driver’s side window. There is a pause, then the window slides down.

“Can I help you?” he asks, as bluntly as he can. The man inside looks him up and down, and shakes his head.

“No, thanks,” he says, smiling politely. “I’m just waiting on someone.”

“Waiting on them since yesterday?” Clint demands. In his mind, he knows this is dumb. You can’t just walk up to a stranger and accuse them of… what is he accusing him of, exactly? The man’s phone buzzes, and as he shifts to pull it out of his pocket Clint sees the glint of something inside his jacket. For a horrible second he thinks it’s a gun, but then he realises that it’s too small. It looks like a badge. Then the man straightens up, and it’s gone. Clint steps back from the car.

“Sorry to bother you,” he says. He’s sure his face is showing his confusion and suspicion. The man gives him a strange look, then the window slides back up and the car pulls away from the curb and disappears off down the street. Clint makes his way inside.

He tries to focus on cooking dinner, but his mind keeps playing it over and over, the car, the man, the badge. He’s gripped with an emotion he can’t quite decipher, until he realises he feels exactly like he did when he came home to an empty house and divorce papers waiting for him on the bench. He feels confused, and he feels like he’s not in control. He forces himself to focus on the pasta sauce bubbling in the pot in front of him, instead of going down that particular road. While he deliberately avoids thinking about Bobbi, he can’t help but think about Natasha. He’s trying to understand the way she looked at him when he told her about the car. He doesn’t know her well enough to know for sure what that look meant, but she knows something, and she’s not telling. That just puts him back on the dangerous line of reminiscing, and by the time Natasha comes downstairs for dinner, she can clearly tell that he’s uneasy.

“Is everything okay?” she asks, as Clint places two bowls of pasta on the table.

“Did you see that car again today?” he asks. Straight out with it. Maybe if he holds nothing back, she’ll follow suit.

“No,” she says, altogether too quickly. Clint feels like someone is pressing on his chest. It’s just like Bobbi, he thinks, lies of omission so he can never see the full picture. She’s looking at him, expecting him to say something.

“How are the seedlings going?” he asks, backing down. He hates himself. Always the coward. Natasha starts talking about the weather and the shelves in the greenhouse, and Clint nods along, already lost in his thoughts again. Eventually, he gets up and puts his plate in the sink, vaguely aware that he’s cut Natasha off in mid-sentence, and that he’s being inconsiderate, but the feelings of déjà-vu are overpowering. He goes to the bathroom and strips off his clothes, stepping into the shower. He rests his forehead against the cool tiles, surprised to find his heart is beating fast, and his throat is constricting, and- is he crying? What the hell is wrong with him? Maybe the stranger is an ex of Natasha’s. Maybe he really has just been waiting for someone the past couple of days. Clint hates how easy it is for him to jump to the worst conclusions. He’s never been like this before, not since he woke up one day suddenly single, with just a dog and an empty house for company.

Slowly, he comes back to himself, and when he feels like he’s ready he hauls himself out of the shower, dries off and falls into bed.


End file.
